“Karl, I’m pregnant—no, please—stop, please!” I begged between gasps for air.

“Ugh . . . that bastard’s spawn growing inside you is not the nicest thought, my dear, especially when I’m trying to f**k you. You really know how to c**k block, you know,” he complained, “but fine, have it your way. I can wait.”

Karl heaved himself off me and leaned on the wall, his eyes roving over my body with lust. He adjusted himself at the crotch and sneered at me.

“Are—are you going to kill me?” I tried not to think about his motives and what would happen if he succeeded. I fought to stay calm and not run. I needed Karl to trust me a little for what I hoped I could manage to do. Not running from him would be the first step.

“I don’t know yet. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.” He grinned evilly. “If you decide you want to f**k sooner rather than later, let me know. That just might work in your favor, babe.”

I tried to ignore his comment. “Did Senator Oakley hire you to kill me?” My heart was thumping so hard it hurt under my ribs.

He tipped his head back at the wall and laughed. “The senator is a sock monkey who couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag if the thing was torn in half. Um . . . no, my dear, Senator Oakley didn’t hire me.”

“Then why? Why do this, Karl? You were always so . . . nice to me.”

“Fuck you to hell and back, you little slut. In seven years you’ve never known anything about me,” he snapped, looking half insane. Make that wholly insane. “I’m not the nice guy you remember from high school,” he told me smugly, grinning now as he talked, his demeanor completely changing from crazy to cheerful in a matter of seconds.

“So tell me what changed you, Karl. How come you’re not the nice guy I remember?” I asked the question and then stayed quiet. I studied my surroundings the best I could, and tried not to think about Ethan, or what he was doing at that moment. Had he figured out my text message yet? Or was he still reeling from the pain of the words, and believing I no longer loved him.

As if that could ever happen!

If Ethan had decoded my hidden message, would I ever have opportunity to act on the only clue I could think to give him at the time?

Karl started talking; rambling, really. Going off on a rant about how he’d killed Eric Montrose and made it look like a bar fight. I barely listened. I was trying to find a way to get to his phone, and knew what I’d do with it the moment I did. I would only need one. One moment of time. I could do it in one small minute if the opportunity arose.

“Nobody else had to die, you know, after Montrose,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s your fault that more people had to die. I’m not loving the killing part here, Brynne. It’s very distasteful to me.” He frowned and looked over my body again, no doubt thinking about something to pass the time alone in this bedroom he’d locked me in.

“Karl, no . . . you’re not like them. You wouldn’t have done what those boys did to me at that party.”

He narrowed his eyes for a fraction and said, “You’re right. They were pigs to do that to you. Raping a girl who is out cold is not my style.” He got off the bed and went to the window and looked at the darkening sky. “You’ll come around in time and be begging me for it eventually.”

Umm . . . no I won’t, you maniacal motherfucker.

“What do you mean about nobody else had to die after Montrose?”

He turned and looked at me like I was an idiot. “I was here—in London. I had everything planned out. We would meet again and start back up right where we left off all those years ago. We’d make a pact to bring Oakley down with the story of that sex video his piece-of-shit son made,” he explained as if he were speaking to a small child. “Then sell out to Oakley’s team, or if he wasn’t interested, then the other side’s team, and go off to live a happy life somewhere nice and quiet.”

“So what happened to change your mind?” I asked in a soft voice.

“Your f**king boyfriend happened!” he snarled. “Out of all the guys you could have hooked up with, you had to pick security with connections to the f**king royal family and British military intelligence! Thanks for that, Brynne. Nice one!”

“But I didn’t find him, he found me. My dad hired Ethan to protect me from . . .” The instant the words left my lips, the fog began to dissipate and the truth of my father’s passing became revealed to me.

“I know,” Karl said simply, his dark eyes showing just how deep his madness was rooted.

“You murdered my father, didn’t you?” I grappled with my hold on any shred of rational thought and action.

I lost.

“Where is she?! WHERE IN THE FUCK IS SHE?!” I yelled to no one in particular. I had Ivan, Neil, Len, and my dad all standing around looking to me for guidance. I didn’t know where to begin, though. It took everything I had not to fall apart and turn to quivering mush in fear and desperation.

“Son, look at this. I think Brynne left you a hidden message in this text.” Dad was holding my mobile and studying it.

“What? Tell me!!” I grabbed my phone from out of his hands and read it again.

“The capitalization,” Dad said over my shoulder, “it’s only certain words excepting the I’s. Look at the others.”

The words: Ethan, My, Old, Phone, Get, It, were the only ones with capital letters . . . except for the I’s. Dad was right. I couldn’t believe it. My girl had successfully delivered a message to me in code under duress of kidnapping. I closed my eyes and prayed for another miracle.

“And other words that should be capital are left lowercase, like your name—”

“Yeah, Dad, I get it!” I cut him off and ran for my desk drawer, fumbling around until I located her original mobile phone. I plugged it in with the charger and turned it on. The wait was torture while it powered up.

There was nothing new on it. My excitement plummeted, but now there was some hope, at least. Some small odds for me to bet on. A layer I could start peeling back to guess at the cards held underneath. I understood those kind of odds. A message meant hope. A message meant she was alive. And if I had to bet on Brynne, I was confident she would fight to her last breath to win. My girl was like that, and there was nobody I had more faith in right now than her.